Haecceitism

Quick meaning: Haecceitism is a noun meaning (philosophy) The view that entities possess haecceity (individual essences or "thisness").

Meaning

(philosophy) The view that entities possess haecceity (individual essences or "thisness").

Example Sentences

Haecceitism is the view that the identity of an object across possible worlds is brute, in the sense that it does not supervene on the qualities or relations instantiated by that object.

[D]espite the commonplace (if sometimes implicit) presumption of haecceitism underlying the work of [Gottfried Wilhelm] Leibniz and his commentators, there is remarkably strong pressure in Leibniz's mature philosophy toward anti-haecceitism.

Haecceitism as such, in the first sense, is neutral about whether a certain horse may not essentially be a horse, or a gold ring be essentially made of gold, or the Queen necessarily have had George VI as her father. Haecceitism, rather, denies that the identity of a substance at a time or its continuing identity over time is constituted by, logically a function of, or dependent on such properties.

As I've argued, the conjunction of actualism, an attractive view about the nature of possibility, and the plausible thesis that some possible objects are disjoint entails haecceitism. Moreover, if, as the foregoing considerations suggest, there are no serious objections to haecceitism, then the charge that either actualism or the thesis in question is false because their conjunction entails haecceitism is unjustified. Thus, we have a plausible argument for haecceitism.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include haecceity, haecceitas, nessness, essent, hereness, essence.

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